aeke was despatched to Van
Baerle with the note bidding him destroy the packet.

Craeke arrived just when Van Baerle was nursing his precious bulbs--the
bulbs of the black tulip--and his sudden entrance rudely disturbed the
tulip-grower. He had not time to read the note; indeed, he was too much
concerned with the welfare of his three particular bulbs to trouble
about it, before a magistrate and some soldiers entered to arrest him.
Van Baerle wrapped up the bulbs in the note from his godfather, and was
sent off under close custody to The Hague. The magistrate carried off
the packet from the cabinet.

All this was Boxtel's work. It was he who had reported to the magistrate
the visit of De Witt and the placing of the packet in a cabinet. And
now, with Van Baerle out of the house as a prisoner, Boxtel in the dead
of night broke into his neighbour's house, to secure the priceless bulbs
of the black tulip. He had made out where they were growing, and he
plunged his hands into the soft soil--only to find nothing. Then the
wretched man guessed that the bulbs had gone with the prisoner to The
Hague, and decided to go in pursuit. Van Baerle could only keep them
while he was alive, and then--they should be his, Isaac Boxtel's.

_III.--The Theft of the Tulip_

Van Baerle was placed in the cell occupied by Cornelius de Witt in the
Buytenhof. Outside, in the market-place, the bodies of the De Witts were
hanging, and Van Baerle read with horror the inscription, "Here hang
that great rascal John de Witt and the little rascal Cornelius de Witt,
enemies of their country."

Gryphus laughed when the prisoner asked him what it meant, and replied,
"That's what happens to those that write secret letters to the enemies
of the Prince of Orange."

A terrible despair fell on Van Baerle, but he refused to escape when
Rosa, the gaoler's beautiful daughter, suggested it to him. He was
brought to trial, and though he denied all knowledge of the
correspondence, his goods were confiscated, and he was condemned to
death. He bequeathed his three tulip bulbs to Rosa, explained how she
must get a certain soil from Dordrecht, and went out calmly to die. On
the scaffold Van Baerle was reprieved and sentenced to perpetual
imprisonment, for the Prince of Orange shrank from further bloodshed.

One spectator in the crowd was bitterly disappointed. This was Boxtel,
who had bribed the headsman to let him have Van Baerle's clothes,
believing that he wou